Issue of need has major role in Pre-K fight

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• Of the roughly 20,000 4-year-olds the U.S. census counted in San Antonio, 16,500 qualify for state-funded pre-K based on metrics outlined by the Texas Education Agency.

• Of those who qualify, 10,800 are enrolled in full-day programs and 3,400 are in half-day programs, according to the city's analysis, partly compiled by state demographer Lloyd Potter.

• That leaves 2,300 not enrolled in any program.

Source: City of San Antonio

Central to Mayor Julián Castro's arguments for his signature education plan is a calculation that kids who could be getting pre-kindergarten — an estimated 2,300 of them — are missing out on programs some say make the difference between their going to college or dropping out.

Opponents claim Pre-K 4 SA would duplicate what school districts already are doing, and some question the city estimate.

On this question, the mayor's campaign is getting little help from the city's two largest school districts — Northside and North East — where voter sentiment against the proposed sales tax increase may be greatest. They've issued statements supporting early education but flatly assert they're meeting the needs of eligible kids.

Officials at other districts, including Harlandale and San Antonio ISDs, point to their own pre-K waiting lists as evidence they could benefit from additional support.

“Nobody doubts that our school districts are doing the best job they can,” Castro said this week. “But ... in this environment of ever-shrinking state funding, they are spending the lion's share of their time and resources on K-12 education. Anyone who has done a serious analysis of the data ... has concluded that thousands of local 4-year-olds are falling through the cracks.”

Pre-K 4 SA calls for a 1/8th-cent sales tax increase to fund a city program that aims to expand high-quality, full-day pre-K access to thousands of kids, train teachers up to the third-grade level and eventually provide competitive grants to school districts and other providers to improve their programs.

About 22,400 kids would be served over eight years, many of them at four city pre-K centers, with a sliding-scale-tuition option for families whose incomes make them ineligible for free programs. A working draft of the scale lists a charge of $4,000 for one school year of pre-K to a family of four with an annual income of $100,000 — less than a third of the annual cost at one of the city's more expensive private schools.

The city's estimate of unmet need calls into question whether school districts are reaching all eligible children or just the ones whose parents know they qualify.

“We feel that we've identified all of those eligible families and feel like we're serving them,” said Aubrey Chancellor, NEISD spokeswoman.

Officials at North East and Northside, which only offer half-day pre-K, conceded their programs may not accommodate the schedule of all working parents. Chancellor chalked that up to parent choice, not a lack of services.

Northside spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said the city's estimate of 2,300 kids “hopefully is very reliable,” but declined to speculate whether losing parents who seek full-day pre-K at Northside might be included in that calculation. He said Northside officials believe the district meets the needs of all eligible students.

Both Northside and North East saw record pre-K enrollment this year. Gonzalez said his district makes “a very strong, good faith effort” to publicize the program and said the mayor's focus on early childhood education also may have boosted the numbers. Chancellor partly attributed the increase to a tough economy, with possibly more families qualifying as low-income.

The meaning of need

“More and more (Texas) children are born into families that live in poverty,” said Kara Johnson, an early childhood expert with the Austin-based nonprofit Texans Care for Children. “Which is why every single year you've seen an increase in your area of the number of kids that are eligible” for pre-K. )

John Folks, former Northside superintendent who served on the city task force that recommended using the sales tax, said he can't say “where those 2,300 children are” but agreed the need exists. The Pre-K 4 SA competitive grants could inject money into school districts' own pre-K programs, and “I, as an educator, could not be against that,” he said.

Mary Bernal, a Homeowner-Taxpayer Association of Bexar County member who urged voters to oppose the sales tax, dismissed the notion that thousands of children are going unserved.

“There is already a state law that children can go to the school and get serviced,” she said.

Some question how robust pre-K outreach is at school districts squeezed by budget cuts. Robert Jaklich, former Harlandale ISD superintendent, said the district in 2000 had about 500 students enrolled in pre-K. After an awareness campaign, the number now hovers around 1,200.

“I would say ... there are students out there that aren't being served by the public school system,” Jaklich said.

But if parents make the choice not to enroll, then the 2,300-student gap is not an unmet need at all, opponents of Pre-K 4 SA have argued, adding that city officials can't guarantee that those families would participate in their program, either.

City officials have said that the program would include an exhaustive outreach campaign.

Full-day vs. half-day

Debate also ranges over the adequacy of current and future funding for existing public pre-K and the current variations in access to full-day programs.

A policy paper by Jeff Judson, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Heartland Institute and a leading opponent of Pre-K 4 SA, argues that research on full day programs is mixed.

“The difference between half-day and full day pre-K is lunch, recess and an extra hour of instruction,” Judson wrote.

Make that an hour and a half of extra instruction, and it adds up, said Rebecca Flores, the city's education policy administrator. A 2009 Austin ISD study found that its full-day students received on average 223 more hours of core academics and showed higher average academic gains compared to its half-day students.

Kathy Bruck, director of curriculum and instruction at Harlandale ISD, agrees. Hers is one of six local districts that use their own money and federal funds to offer full-day pre-K to all eligible students. Most of them have higher percentages of kids from lower-income households— a demographic Bruck says is less likely to be school-ready without full-day pre-K.

“We know (full-day pre-K) makes a difference,” Bruck said.

SAISD, the city's third largest-district, spends about $16.2 million in local funds to offer full-day pre-K.

Of the other San Antonio districts, Northside, North East, Judson and Southwest ISD offer half-day pre-K to all children qualifying for state-funded pre-K and a full day program for those who qualify for the federally funded Head Start. Both districts identify capacity and funding as hurdles to offering a full-day program for all.

NISD Superintendent Brian Woods said it would take “a tremendous building effort” to be able to do that at his district, and research on the advantages of full-day programs is inconclusive.

About $200 million in state money to help districts pay for full-day pre-K was lost with the $1.4 billion in education grants the Legislature eliminated last year. Locally, that hit Harlandale hardest, with a loss of more than $1 million, but it also hurt East Central, Judson and South San ISDs.

“Districts with large numbers of poor kids ... have the greatest incentive to figure out how to put these children on a path to success,” said Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio. “If we truly care about these kids ... we need to expand early education opportunities instead of cutting them.”

Johnson, who lobbies state lawmakers for early childhood funding, said she anticipated less federal pre-K funding under a budget-cutting deal that Congress set to take effect in January.

“It's our estimate that thousands of children here could lose childcare because of the federal cuts that are being mandated,” she said.